The collection includes the original story “The Lady of Wands,” in which a Fey cop tells her story; “Seven Smiles and Six Frowns” a story of the evolution of a Fairy Tale; “The Cinnamon Cavalier,” a Fairy Tale variation one critic called, “The Gingerbread Man, writ large;” and “The Margay’s Children” a modern take on a “Beastly Bridegroom” tale. Also here are “The Progress of Solstice and Chance,” featuring complex sexual relations and an invented pantheon of gods; the outrageous situation and characters of “The Bear Dresser’s Secret;” and the “The Lady of Wands,” set in a fairy/mortal demimonde. Rounding out the collection are two Arthurian tales, “Sir Morgravain Speaks of Night Dragons and Other Things” and “The Queen and the Cambion” in which the eponymous queen, though famous, is not Guinevere.

Also original to this book is my afterword, “A Secret History of Small Books,” which traces the path of Fairy Tales as a refuge for women, gay/lesbian writers, and LGBT readers from the 17th century on.